Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Democrat Party transforms into perpetual war party, accelerated by its Russia-gate hysteria. Rep. Barbara Lee does 180 on peace and diplomacy she bravely defended in 2001-Norman Solomon, Consortium News

But, now, the core wisdom of her eloquent speech on the House floor nearly 16 years ago is under threat — from Lee herself.

When Lee beseeched her colleagues to “think through the implications
of our actions today, so that this does not spiral out of control,” she
was looking far beyond the politics and passions of that moment on Sept.
14, 2001. Now, in a July 7 (2017) tweet, she has stepped away from steadfast support for the necessity of diplomatic initiatives.

Finding alternatives to war must include diplomacy. In the case of
the “war on terror” that Lee resisted from the start, what spiraled out
of control was endless and boundless war.These days, the escalating
tensions with Russia could spiral out of control all the way to nuclear
holocaust
.That’s a major reason the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the symbolic hands of its Doomsday Clock even closer to apocalyptic midnight early this year. The nuclear peril is terribly real, and it’s growing.

[Ed. note: What are the "attacks on our democracy" she says Putin orchestrated?]

(continuing): "Yet real diplomacy often requires that leaders we don’t like — at the
top of a foreign government and maybe our own — sit down together, talk
and negotiate. In the case of the world’s two nuclear-weapons
superpowers, that could turn out to mean the difference between
coexistence or co-annihilation.

During her historic 2001 speech on the House floor, when she insisted
that “some of us must urge the use of restraint,” Lee was refusing to
be swept up in the easy and dangerous conformity of the times. She saw
that militarized confrontation would be a tragically unwise alternative
to diplomacy.

Lee now seems to have cast aside such understanding, at least as far
as relations with Russia are concerned. Her constituents, as well as
other supporters in California and beyond, should encourage her to
return to it.